Aleksandar Hemon

To write has to be related to a drive inside.

— Aleksandar Hemon

“Shiny teeth were footnote to her smile.”

— Aleksandar Hemon

The balls do not make a writer.

— Aleksandar Hemon

Memory narrativises itself.

— Aleksandar Hemon

“Home is where somebody notices your absence.”

— Aleksandar Hemon

My skin was the border between the world and me.

— Aleksandar Hemon

“We dreamt of light, but hoped for darkness.”

— Aleksandar Hemon

Lord, why did you leave me in these woods?

— Aleksandar Hemon

“The detectives ransack the place with the passion of soldiers fighting a just war.”

— Aleksandar Hemon

As long as there are living human beings, there will be language and stories.

— Aleksandar Hemon

Where can you go from nowhere, except deeper into nowhere?

— Aleksandar Hemon

“If you wait long enough, something will happen - there has never been a time when nothing happened.”

— Aleksandar Hemon

“She was beautiful; my breath was taken; we were still lonely; she said yes.”

— Aleksandar Hemon

The perfect borscht is what life should be but never is.

— Aleksandar Hemon

I long for, not a writer's retreat - I can write in any situation - but a reader's retreat.

— Aleksandar Hemon

The world is always greater than your desires; plenty is never enough.

— Aleksandar Hemon

I gradually became aware that my interiority was inseparable from my exteriority, that the geography of my city was the geography of…

— Aleksandar Hemon

Politics imagined as direct agency, whether by voting or by participating in politics, you can think you're not political because you don't…

— Aleksandar Hemon

The privilege of a middle-class, stable, bourgeois life is that you can pretend that you are not complicated and project yourself as…

— Aleksandar Hemon

“Chief Shippy stands frozen, holding his breath, exhaling with relief as the young man dies, the gun smoke slowly moving across the…

— Aleksandar Hemon

“We are never as beautiful as now. The crushing sadness of hotel rooms; the gelid lights and clean notepads; the blank walls…

— Aleksandar Hemon

“It was a great fucking time, the short era of disaster euphoria, for nothing enhances pleasures and blocks guilt like a looming…

— Aleksandar Hemon

Writing is a mode of agency in the world that is different from mere employment. There has to be some sort of…

— Aleksandar Hemon

I do believe - and I know I shouldn't - that art transcends money and success and any of that. You can…

— Aleksandar Hemon

“Rora had heard prayers before, he was well aware that Isus Krist featured in them, he knew the sound well, but knew…

— Aleksandar Hemon

“Let me tell you a joke, Rora said. Mujo and his wife, Fata, are in bed. It's late at night. Mujo is…

— Aleksandar Hemon

“And did the biblical Lazarus have a mother? What did she do when he was resurrected? Did he bid her good-bye before…

— Aleksandar Hemon

One of the many conditions that have to be met for a brain to become a mind, and therefore have consciousness, is…

— Aleksandar Hemon

I've never had a stupid student in my life. I never look down on my students. I never thought, "Look at these…

— Aleksandar Hemon

“And the world around me was nothing if not an infinity of distractions: cute girls, novels and comic books, my budding record…

— Aleksandar Hemon

“My dreams were but a means of forgetting, they were the branches tied to the galloping horses of our days, the emptying…

— Aleksandar Hemon

“Uskoro je povjerovao da to što on piše nije poezija, nego nešto drugo, nešto dublje i teže opisivo; nešto što izražava njegov…

— Aleksandar Hemon

“...while hiding in plain sight in Belgrade, undercover as a New Age mountebank, Karadžić frequented a bar called Mad House - Luda…

— Aleksandar Hemon

There has to be a kind of grassroots push, a movement, as it were, against the inherent isolationism of American capitalism as…

— Aleksandar Hemon

“There's a psychological mechanism, I've come to believe, that prevents most of us from imagining the moment of our own death. For…

— Aleksandar Hemon

“Much like Ella, I'd found myself with an excess of words, the wealth of which far exceeded the pathetic limits of my…

— Aleksandar Hemon

“One of the most common platitudes we heard was that “words failed.” But words were not failing us at all. It was…

— Aleksandar Hemon

“...-not only did he deplore the waste of words, he detested the moral lassitude with which they were wasted. To him, in…

— Aleksandar Hemon

“This took place just before the war, in the relatively rosz times, when we were euphoric with the imminence of disaster –…

— Aleksandar Hemon

“Let me tell you a joke, Rora said. Mujo wakes up one day, after a long night of drinking, and asks himself…

— Aleksandar Hemon